GET YOUR APP TO SPEED: GOOGLE UAC BEST PRACTICES FOR SCALING MOBILE APPS

October 29, 2018 4min

Google’s Universal App Campaigns (or UAC) is shaking the mobile marketplace up. Intended to incorporate machine learning into advertising and make it easier for developers to promote their apps across different platforms and networks, UAC has already produced more than 6 billion installs and delivered over 50% of all app downloads.

To help advertisers scale up their UAC campaigns, Webpals® Group and Google have decided to put together a webinar. If you missed it, here’s a blog to bring you app to speed.😊 Here are a few of Universal App Campaign best practices to think about when promoting your apps with Google UAC:

UAC Best Practices per Campaign Type

With Google UAC, it’s possible to drive installs, in-app actions and even build lifetime value (or LTV) by targeting paying users. The last option has already proven to be very effective. Although it is still in beta, you can run LTV campaigns by working with Google’s partners such as Webpals® Group.

UAC for Installs/Advanced Installs

If you are on the hunt for more installs, which is a great choice if you want to boost its performance, keep these tips in mind:

Number of Conversions

UAC’s conversion optimizer needs 100 conversions to stabilize and about two weeks to optimize. To ensure the most optimal result, remember to target by country and avoid excessive splitting of your targeting by regions/cities.

If you want to run an advanced UAC Installs campaign – targeting users that are more likely to engage with your app while keeping the volume of installs – stick to more than ten in-app conversions per campaign a day to allow Google UAC to do its job and optimize closer to the CPA model.

Ads

UAC uses texts and assets to create a diversity of ads for you automatically. That means, the creatives you upload become the building blocks for UAC.

To drive the best performance, make sure to add at least five images and one video in addition to the copy (four lines) for your text ads. By the way, videos are a game changer for iOS UAC campaigns.

Note that the same recommendations apply if you want to run advanced install campaigns in UAC.

Budget

Since UAC algorithms need to have some room to work with when it comes to your target CPI (or tCPI), set your budget to a minimum of 50X your target CPI (or tCPI.) Also, frequent changes of more than 20% to your bids and budgets are not recommended. That way, UAC algorithms won’t get mixed up and start working from the beginning every time you make a change.

If you are going for an advanced UAC install campaign, keep these recommendations in mind as well. Also, do not forget to bid 20% higher for your tCPI.

Why? Advanced install campaigns drive installs of higher quality that are more likely to drive actions – and those actions are going to cost you more.

Settings

UAC campaigns will yield better results if you tick “Yes” for only one install/first open. All other conversion settings should be marked “No.” If you’re running two campaigns for your apps from a single account (one for Android and one for iOS), tick “Yes” for both. Apropos, this is true for all UAC campaign types.

When it comes to advanced install campaigns in UAC, in addition to the above, it’s best to refrain from changing in-app event optimizations at campaign level to ensure the smoother performance of UAC algorithms.

UAC for Actions

If your goal is to drive as many in-app actions as possible (registrations, purchases, etc.), it’s best to run “UAC for Actions” campaigns, which, in contrast to UAC advanced install campaigns, help you reach the right users by focusing solely on in-app actions.

According to our app promotion experts, these campaigns are more suitable for matured mobile apps and present an excellent opportunity to drive more paying and loyal users.

Number of Conversions

Just like with advanced install campaigns, set the number of conversions to be more than ten in-app conversions per campaign daily, but make sure it is representative enough of your business goal. Besides that, targeting multiple events of different value can overwhelm the system. For example, if you’re gunning for “Registrations” and “Purchases,” pick only one.

Ads

With this campaign type, one of UAC best practices is to upload five image creatives and two videos (both portrait and landscape), in addition to writing your four lines of text. Apropos, Google data shows that portrait videos tend to have a 60% higher conversion rate than landscape ones.

Budget

Here you’ll need to set your budget to at least 10X your target CPA (tCPA) to ensure the best results. Our partners at Google give a great example: a $300 actual, historical CPA and a $10 UAC bid will not do you good.

Google suggests checking the last three months of campaign results to examine the CPA you’ve been getting for the targeted event so far in your existing campaigns and make sure it’s similar to the CPA you want to bid on.

Settings

See the recommendations for “advanced UAC installs” campaigns above.

Let’s face it: bidding on the desired event is far from being a rose garden. Think of all the event data you need. Not to mention, your targeted events must occur at least ten times a day, which is not always the case. That’s why sometimes your best bet is to find a proxy event – the event that highly correlates with the targeted event.

If the desired event can’t be targeted (Purchase), Webpals® Mobile experts check which of the events corresponds to it in the best possible way (Add to Cart).